Simha Mummalaneni

Assistant Professor of Marketing

I am an Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington. My research interests include platforms, retailing, advertising, and digital marketing. Much of my research focuses on contexts where firms' marketing activities intersect with public policy and societal issues.

Research

Publications

  1. Email Campaigns that Suit the Candidate: Leveraging Automated Text Analysis to Increase Political Donations (with Rebecca Jen-Hui Wang and Mathew S. Isaac)
    2. Journal of Interactive Marketing (forthcoming).   [link]   [pdf]
    Political candidates can increase their campaign donations by carefully crafting their emails to emphasize unique textual characteristics that resonate with their potential donors.

  2. Making a Smooth Exit? Menthol Bans and Cigarette Sales in Massachusetts (with Ali Goli and Pradeep K. Chintagunta)
    3. Marketing Science (forthcoming).   [link]   [pdf]   [SSRN]   [UW News summary]   [CBR summary]
    Statewide bans on menthol cigarettes are relatively ineffective because of widespread cross-border shopping for cigarettes.

  3. Show and Sell: Studying the Effects of Branded Cigarette Product Placement in TV Shows on Cigarette Sales (with Ali Goli, Pradeep K. Chintagunta, and Sanjay K. Dhar)
    4. Marketing Science (2022).   [link]   [pdf]   [SSRN]   [CBR summary]   [CBR video]
    TV product placement for cigarette brands increases sales for the brand portrayed on-screen, its direct competitors, and the cigarette category as a whole.

  4. Maximizing the Benefits of B2B Supplier Diversification (with Jonathan Z. Zhang)
    5. MIT Sloan Management Review (2020).   [link]   [pdf]
    Supplier diversity initiatives are a savvy business move as well as an investment in social responsibility.

Working papers

  1. How Do Content Producers Respond to Engagement on Social Media Platforms? (with Hema Yoganarasimhan and Varad Pathak)   [SSRN]
    2. Social media companies can improve overall platform outcomes by identifying users who respond very positively to receiving engagement from others, and then providing them with targeted interventions.

  2. Gender Diversity on Cable News: An Analysis of On-Screen Talent and Viewership (with Ali Goli)   [SSRN]
    3. Cable news networks can improve viewership outcomes by providing women with a greater share of screen time.

  3. Affirmative Action as a Cost Cutting Tool in Procurement Markets   [pdf]
    4. Providing preferential treatment to small, women-owned, and minority-owned vendors can reduce purchasing costs for buyers in B2B markets.

  4. Vendor Pricing and Participation in Business Markets with Affirmative Action Policies   [pdf]
    5. Affirmative action programs in B2B markets have a strong effect on vendors' decisions regarding whether to bid on contracts, but does not affect their pricing decisions.

  5. Buyer Biases and Relationships in Government Procurement Markets
    6. When given ownership details about vendors, buyers in online B2B markets display a bias against purchasing from women-owned and minority-owned vendors.

Teaching

Courses

  1. Customer Analytics
    2. Customer Analytics addresses how to use data analytics to learn about individual customers and market to them throughout the entire customer life cycle.

    This course focuses on how companies can use individual-level data to target customers, send them individualized offers, predict their purchasing patterns, recommend new products to them, and retain them over the long run.

  2. Digital Marketing Analytics
    3. Digital Marketing Analytics uses an analytics-centered approach to improve online advertising, email marketing, and mobile marketing.

    This course introduces the core concepts of digital marketing and primarily focuses on how companies can make better digital marketing decisions and improve their profitability by using data analytics and A/B experiments in this context.

  3. Advanced Marketing Strategy
    4. Advanced Marketing Strategy focuses on understanding, developing, and evaluating marketing strategies throughout the product life cycle.

    A good marketing strategy ensures that a company's marketing decisions are internally consistent and well-suited for the competitive situation at hand. In this course, students will learn how to develop a marketing strategy that will yield long-term success.

  4. Business to Business Marketing
    5. Business to Business (B2B) Marketing addresses how to understand, create, and deliver value when selling goods and services to other businesses, governments, and institutional customers.

    In this course, students will learn how business markets differ from consumer markets, how to assess opportunities in business markets, and how to make marketing decisions that enable a B2B company to generate and deliver value for itself, its business partners, and its customers.

Honors and Awards

  1. PACCAR Award for Excellence in Teaching (2023)   [Foster Magazine summary]

  2. MBA Professor of the Year (2022)

  3. Dean's Excellence Award for Graduate Teaching (2020)

CV



Employment

Foster School of Business, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Assistant Professor of Marketing, 2016 - present

Education

Kellogg School of Managagement, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
Ph.D. in Marketing, 2016
M.S. in Marketing, 2012

University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
A.B. in Economics and Political Science, 2010

Contact

Mailing Address:
Simha Mummalaneni
Foster School of Business
University of Washington
Box 353226, 487 Paccar Hall
Seattle, WA 98195-3226

Email:
simha@uw.edu

Office:
Paccar 487